source: The New Yorker

Kathryn Paige Harden works in the field of behavior genetics

  • psych professor, University of Texas at Austin
  • mentored by Eric Turkheimer

behavior genetics investigates influence of genes on character traits and life outcomes

pushback from Harden’s colleagues

there’s a possible link between behavior genetics and eugenics

  • Harden was ostracized by her liberal colleagues for her work

polygenic score a weighted sum of an individuals relevant genetic variants

  • Harden shared a paper that used polygenic score to explain population variance
  • the paper emphasized that it’s difficult to distinguish between genetic and environmental effects on social outcomes
  • There was a lot of pushback to this paper. professor of public policy at Duke: “there will be no reason to pursue these types of research programs at all, and they can be rendered to the same location as Holocaust denial research”

The Bell Curve, Charles Murray & Richard Herrnstein - includes claims about:

  • genetic basis for racial hierarchy in intelligence
  • genetic foundation for poverty and inequality
  • Harden’s colleagues compared the paper she shared to the bell curve

they considered refusing to fund research into effects of genes on behavior or social outcomes

We can’t commit to egalitarianism by declaring genetic uniformity

The left isn’t talking about this, so the only voices are on the right

  • “red pill” claims to expose liberal hypocrisy
  • Harden is trying to fight back

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality - Harden’s new book

behavioralism vs determinism

behavioralism - claims that environmental manipulation can produce any desired outcome

  • aligns with postwar liberal principles

How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? - 1969 article

  • argued that there was an IQ gap between races in America, and the reason was at least partly genetic
  • argued that policy interventions were unlikely shift this hierarchy
  • Got a lot of criticism

IQ is flexible

  • Poor children gain IQ after wealthy families adopt them
  • populations gain IQ over time

Just because outcomes are partly genetic doesn’t mean they’re inevitable

The Search for a Psychometric left - Terkheimer argued that the left has nothing to fear from genes

  • We don’t need to deny heritability to oppose determinism, reductionism and racism

the limits of behavior genetics

Some studies found genes for aggression, depression, homosexuality, but the studies couldn’t be replicated

Complex traits are governed by multiple genes

genome-wide association study (GWAS)- attempt to identify thousands of places in the genome where DNA differences correlate to traits/outcomes

  • can predict population variance for height, weight and some diseases
  • can predict some complex behavioral traits

A GWA for educational attainment found ~1300 sites on the genome that correlate with scholastic success

  • individual sites have a negligible predictive ability, but the sum is very predictive
  • people with the highest scores are 5x more likely to graduate from college

GWAS show correlation, but not causation

  • depend on populations within a specific society
  • results are not portable - results from the UK will not tell you anything about populations in Estonia
  • not a good predictor for individuals

GWAS reveal a lot much about geography and culture

  • example: you could conduct a GWAS for chopstick use. It would tell you more about culture than individual’s dexterity
  • possible solution: compare GWAS results within families

Social outcomes also depend on plenty of factors (conscientiousness, risk-aversion, physical features…)

Harden thinks we’ll be stuck forever if we consider this question to have a binary answer

One benefit of GWAS: they help you account for genetic differences when trying to do studies on environmental factors

  • Parents have significant impact on environmental effects, even if they don’t pass on all of their genes

Another benefit: We can see how treatments interact with genetics

Clash with Sam Harris

Sam Harris had Charles Murray on as a guest in April 2017

  • they said that people don’t want to hear that IQ differs across ethnic groups
  • Harris mostly had him on because he’d been caught up in the culture war

Harden and Turkheimer wrote a piece for vox meant to confront Harris’ podcast

  • They had to make a nuanced argument to separate the truths from the falsehoods in the podcast
  • We can’t deny that genetics have an impact on human academic scores
  • However there’s no reason to think that racial IQ gaps are anything but the result of racism

Harris eventually had Harden on his podcast. It was actually pretty awkward

blowback from the left

There are more voices on the left that are trying to acknowledge inherited intelligence

  • the cult of smart asserts that improving the education system won’t help until we acknowledge that some students are just smarter than others

Harden is getting dragged on twitter

Dorothy Roberts professor of law, sociology, Africana studies - responded to a 2018 Op-Ed that Harden wrote in the NYT, which said we should use genetics to inform education policy

“There’s no way that genetic testing is going to lead to a restructuring of society in a just way in the future. We have a hundred years of evidence for what happens when social outcomes are attributed to genetic differences, and it is always to stigmatize, control and punish the people predicted to have socially devalued traits”

There is a push from the right to pay more attention to genetics

  • blueprint says that polygenic scores should be understood as “fortune tellers”, and white supremacists love it

The genetic lottery

assersions:

  • just because we value some traits more than others doesn’t mean we value some people more than others
  • We should view inherent qualities as something you were lucky to get
  • We should get better at separating the questions of nature and nurture
  • If we don’t acknowledge how genes played a part in our success, we assume that we did it all through hard work
  • If genes play a significant role in our success, maybe we shouldn’t design our society so that you need a college degree to get health care